"Well, he isn't very likely to, because"—here Eben turned his head aside in embarrassment—"because he's got a wife and family over to Olneyville."
Radiant delight overspread Miranda's countenance.
"I hope they'll just let him go," she said. "He's welcome to what money he's got of mine,—more'n welcome." And homeward she went with a light step.
"Women are queer," mused Eben, as he returned to his fish-cleaning.
"She's lost her beau and her money, and she's tickled to death."
"I declare, you look just as fresh and young and happy as you did fifteen years ago!" said the widow, with a touch of envy, as they sat down at the cheerful breakfast-table.
Miranda touched Mrs. Bemis's arm as she came out of the meeting-house the next Sunday, Ephraim's boys, preternaturally smooth of hair and shining of face, beside her.
"If it ain't perfane to say it. Mis' Bemis, I feel as if I'd got through the eye of that needle clear into the kingdom of heaven."
The poor-mistress commented upon the saying in the midst of her numerous family that night: "She's got that selfish, tempery woman saddled onto her for life, and she'll work her fingers to the bone for them boys, that ain't anything to her, and won't be apt to amount to much,—for there never was one of them Spencers that did,—and she calls that the kingdom of heaven!"
"It's jest as I always told you," remarked Cap'n 'Kiah placidly. "It's all owin' to the p'int of view."